


Greensleeves

by placentalmammal



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 06:37:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4337723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placentalmammal/pseuds/placentalmammal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Enclave uses Catherine's identical twin sister to try and get information out of James.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Greensleeves

The room was small, no more than 10 x 12, with white-painted cinder block walls and a gleaming linoleum floor. There was a prevailing chemical odor of bleach and trichloromethane, but beneath it was the tang of blood and urine. The room was feigning respectability, a hospital's veneer over a butcher's reality.

James was seated in the center of the room, shackled to a table, opposite a two-way mirror. He'd been sitting there for hours, listening to the hum of the fluorescent light and avoiding his eyes in the mirror. He'd lost weight since he'd left the Vault. His face had become angular beneath his beard, cheekbones and sunken eyes like a monster in an old holo.

The first time he'd been in this room, the guard had set a full plate of food on the table in front of him, just out of reach of his manacled hands. He'd shut his eyes against it, but he couldn't block out the smell: Brahmin stew, with fresh, clean meat and vegetables (doubtless raised in an Enclave lab and bred for 'purity'), served with buttered bread, tantalizing and completely beyond his grasp.

This was the fifth time he'd been in the room. Or the sixth. The days had begun to run together. The first time, they had left him there with the food, the second, they had beat him until he lost consciousness. The third, they showed him surveillance footage of his daughter, recorded by Eyebots and spliced together by Colonel Autumn himself.

They alternated the cerebral tortures with the physical ones, and he was due for a beating. At any moment, the discrete metal door would open, and Autumn would enter, flanked by masked soldiers. The interrogation would begin civilly-Autumn would take the seat opposite his, undo the shackles that held him in place. He'd ask after his health, tell him how his daughter was doing ("They're calling the scourge of humanity now, you must be so proud"). As the conversation progressed, Autumn would drop all pretensions of civility and the beating would begin in earnest.

The door opened. A woman stumbled in.

Before the door shut behind her, James caught a glimpse of an Enclave soldier in full power armor, his weapon drawn. He frowned at the soldier, at his drawn gun, and then he looked again at the woman.

His stomach dropped.

Catherine. _Catherine._ Alive, beautiful as he remembered. Older, hair gone completely grey, her face more lined than it had been, but _Catherine._

In the few seconds it took her to take the seat opposite his, his mind caught up with his heart. Not Catherine. That was impossible. But her sister. Unlikely, not impossible.

When she was a girl, she had a sister, a twin. They'd been separated by a slave raid a few weeks before their thirteenth birthday, and Catherine had said she'd long since given up the hope of seeing her again. They'd discussed naming the baby after her, but decided not to.

"Too painful," Catherine had said. "I don't need to start mourning all over again."

"Marie," he said, hesitantly.

She shifted in the chair, her eyes darting around the room. She glanced over her shoulder at the two-way mirror, then focused on him.

"James, right?" She slouched in the chair, arms drawn defensively over her bony chest. The years had not been kind to her. By James' math, she was 60 or 61-she looked 70, her dark skin hanging loosely from her skull, her scalp visible beneath her thin, translucent hair. She was thin-James was confident that if she removed her shirt, he could have counted her ribs.

He nodded. "Are you alright?" he said, quietly.

She looked at the mirror again. Her lips were thin and cracked, her voice scarcely more than a whisper. When she opened her mouth to speak, he had to lean across the table to hear her.

"Do you miss your wife?" She spoke mechanically, as if reading from a script.

"Marie, are you alright?"

Her bony hands flew up to her collar. She undid a button, then another. "I can keep you company."

James watched in horror as she removed her blouse. Her chest heaved, her dark eyes rolled in her head. Her hands were shaking, she struggled with the buttons. Her chest was covered in scars, testimony to a life lived at the mercy of others.

He realized that she was meant to be seducing him-if he wouldn't talk to Autumn and his officers, maybe he'd speak to Catherine. But the skeleton revealing herself to him was not his wife. He felt pity and disgust rather than desire.

"Stop," he said. "Stop."

Marie's shaking hands stilled on the clasp of her bra. She stared at him, eyes wide, exposing too much of her yellowed, bloodshot sclera. "Please," she croaked. "They're going to kill me. If I don't get the information from you, they're going to kill me."

"Marie," he said.

She ignored him, plunging on. "Don't let them kill me. Please don't let them kill me. I'm-I'm expendable. He said so. Autumn. If you don't talk, they're going to kill me. Please," her voice broke into a sob. "They're going to kill me. Please."

"Marie," he said gently, "If I tell them what they want to know, they'll kill us both."

She shook her head violently. "He promised. If you talk, they'll let me go, they promised." She stood, so abruptly that she caught herself off-balance and had to lean on the table to keep from falling. "I can go to the Temple of the Union. He promised."

"I'm sorry, Marie," he said. "There are lives at stake-"

"What about me?" she shrieked. "What about my life?"

He shook his head.

She lunged across the table, and kissed him, her mouth desperate and wild against his.

He felt nothing.

The door slid open. Two Enclave soldiers stepped in. One of them stepped forward and hauled Marie off James, effortlessly pinning her arms behind her back. He threw her against the wall, and something cracked. She slid down the wall, trailing blood, still pleading.

"James," she whispered. "Don't let them kill me please James don't let them kill me James please-"

One of the soldiers held a length of pipe, the other a baseball bat. They closed in around her, and James shut his eyes against it, but he couldn't block out the smell: blood, hot and fresh, overwhelming the room's chemical scent. She whimpered and cried out as her bones broke beneath their onslaught. Her whimpers, punctuated by the crack of lead and aluminum against skin, gave away to moans and gurgles, then to silence.

James didn't open his eyes until he heard the door close, heard the soldier's footsteps fading to silence. The copper stench of blood was thick in his nose and throat, the hum of the fluorescent lights pounding in his ears. He had thought the soldiers would take the body with them; they did not.

And staring at the body, limbs twisted, blood bright against the polished linoleum, bone poking through the dark skin, James couldn't see Marie any more.

All he could see was Catherine.


End file.
